The staff on the ship did not know how to handle us. When we needed their assistance they could not work out what we wanted and when they wanted us to follow their procedures, most of them found it impossible to get through to us. There were a couple of passengers who did try to help us. We imagined that our three weeks in Korea were going to be very difficult if the ship staff were typical. Fortunately, as we landed in Incheon we found things were much better. We passed many other ships on the way including some carrying LPG.
There was light fog all the way.
As the ship came under the Incheon Bridge our fellow passenger told us it was 18 km long (21 we found out later) and the longest bridge in Asia.
To our surprise the ferry sneaked into a lock and we spent more than half an hour lifting ourselves up to the level of the inner harbour. It seems that the tides here are very large and they need to keep the inner harbour constant.
We had chosen our hotel on the basis of its apparent closeness to the waterfront and were chuffed to see a big sign "HOTEL PARADISE" on top of a building quite close to the dock as we came close.
We got through the customs with no problems and as we emerged in the public area of the terminal we saw quite a few placards with people's names on them and we could not help but wish we were still being assisted by the wonderful guides we had in Russia/Mongolia/China. We knew this section of our tour would be the most testing so gritted our teeth. Near the exit of the terminal a young lady was available in an information booth and (unusually) we were the only ones disembarking who needed her. She gave us maps of Incheon and Korea and explained how to get to the Paradise Hotel which we saw from the map was right next to the Train Station which we would be using to get to Seoul. We had resolved to catch a taxi to the hotel to avoid getting lost but the driver who approached us did not respond when we told him the name of our Hotel, so we set off walking, which went well till we got to the hotel. It was perched on a hill and we had to circle it to find the road up into it. No footpath was provided and everyone seemed to arrive and leave by bus or car. At $112 per night the hotel was a bargain. The rooms were fine and the service very good. Our only complaint was that the wifi was only in the lobby and not very good.
The hotel is right next to China Town and we easily found a nice small restaurant with excellent Chinese cum Korean food for dinner at very cheap prices. The staff at the Information Centre next to the station were very keen to help us and we immediately booked local bus tours for Saturday and Sunday. This cost us a grand total of AUD30 - 2 tickets for a 5 hour tour on Saturday and a 7 hour tour on Sunday. We are still scratching our heads about that.
As the ship came under the Incheon Bridge our fellow passenger told us it was 18 km long (21 we found out later) and the longest bridge in Asia.
To our surprise the ferry sneaked into a lock and we spent more than half an hour lifting ourselves up to the level of the inner harbour. It seems that the tides here are very large and they need to keep the inner harbour constant.
We had chosen our hotel on the basis of its apparent closeness to the waterfront and were chuffed to see a big sign "HOTEL PARADISE" on top of a building quite close to the dock as we came close.
We got through the customs with no problems and as we emerged in the public area of the terminal we saw quite a few placards with people's names on them and we could not help but wish we were still being assisted by the wonderful guides we had in Russia/Mongolia/China. We knew this section of our tour would be the most testing so gritted our teeth. Near the exit of the terminal a young lady was available in an information booth and (unusually) we were the only ones disembarking who needed her. She gave us maps of Incheon and Korea and explained how to get to the Paradise Hotel which we saw from the map was right next to the Train Station which we would be using to get to Seoul. We had resolved to catch a taxi to the hotel to avoid getting lost but the driver who approached us did not respond when we told him the name of our Hotel, so we set off walking, which went well till we got to the hotel. It was perched on a hill and we had to circle it to find the road up into it. No footpath was provided and everyone seemed to arrive and leave by bus or car. At $112 per night the hotel was a bargain. The rooms were fine and the service very good. Our only complaint was that the wifi was only in the lobby and not very good.
The hotel is right next to China Town and we easily found a nice small restaurant with excellent Chinese cum Korean food for dinner at very cheap prices. The staff at the Information Centre next to the station were very keen to help us and we immediately booked local bus tours for Saturday and Sunday. This cost us a grand total of AUD30 - 2 tickets for a 5 hour tour on Saturday and a 7 hour tour on Sunday. We are still scratching our heads about that.
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